Hey, What’s That: Sirlin Games

I should have plugged this website a long, long time ago. Sirlin Games is one of the smartest blogs I’ve ever read about game design, hands down. I learn something new every single time I go there, whether it’s catching a glimpse into the terminology of fighting games, or … well, mostly it’s all fighting game terminology that I learn, but the concepts can be applied to so many situations, the guy might as well be writing about life.

I first learned the concept of “yomi” from reading the article Yomi: Spies of the Mind, and it turned my world upside down. There’s a simple term (in Japanese, of course) that describing the phenomenon of Awesomeness By Analysis. You can read the article, of course, and I recommend it, but yomi basically works out to mean “mind reading” when used in this context. It’s the primary ability of any Chessmaster worth his salt.

It was after reading the article about yomi and after playing word association with myself to come up with new terms to describe character ability scores that I came up with the concepts of associated attributes for those ability scores (mentioned in the same article) and how they would interact with one another on an offensive and defensive basis.

And this barely scratches the surface of the influence Sirlin’s writings have been on my design philosophy. And I’ve only read a small handful of his work. I suppose I really ought to buy his book, now that I think about it. *chuckles*